Beth Torrance‘s new EP, ‘Your Favourite’, marks a new chapter for the now Auckland-based singer-songwriter successfully capturing the zeitgeist of change in what she describes as a snapshot of a time in her life. Moving on from her previous intimate and acoustic indie-folk songs, her sophomore four-track EP was written with a full band recording in mind, and resonates with the sense of standing on the edge of something new.

We last heard from Beth Torrance with the late 2024 release of her six-song debut EP ‘Tiny Flowers’, released on Bigpop Records’ Particle Recordings label. Although she had released an album two years prior it was an introduction to her talent for many.

Delicate, almost tentative in an acoustic guitar and voice kind of way, it was recorded with an intimacy that reflected the songs’ bedroom demo origins. Torrance was then living in Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula, moving to Auckland not long after.

“I’ve been thinking about the time I spent living in Thames a bit recently. I think you can kind of hear that in the songs, or manifested in the songs that I was writing. There’s a sort of intimacy or a warmth, and you know their being acoustic that I think comes from living sort of remotely. I mean it is a bit isolated, or it can feel at times.

“It is also really close to the sea, and the land. So I think you kind of can hear that in those earlier songs. And I think conversely, you can hear the city in the new songs. I moved back to Auckland in 2023, and just immediately wanted to be playing with a band. It was sort of like, you know, it was on my list of things to do!”

The songs she’d been writing since ‘Tiny Flowers’ were already different, a change up from singer-songwriter to indie-rock frontwoman – hallmarked by Torrance putting aside the acoustic in favour of an electric guitar. While perhaps not consciously, it was an implicit statement of musical intent.

“I’ve actually always played live with an electric guitar (occasionally, I’d play with an acoustic), but I think because of that it wasn’t daunting to sort of then turn to it for recording as well. I guess it has become sort of part of the fabric of my writing a bit more.

“I would think about the song in an electric context, as I was writing often, even if I was writing on an acoustic. Yeah, so in that sense, it was definitely a sort of deliberate move forwards.”

Her move back to the city came soon after ‘Tiny Flowers’, with the recording of ‘Your Favourite’ taking place only about six months from the EP release. Bigpop audio engineer / producer Jacob Rush who recorded ‘Tiny Flowers’ also produced this EP alongside Torrance. Jordan Lim (Cindy, Preacher) played drums, with Alex G band member John Heywood on bass.

Torrance explains she went to the Alex G show at the Powerstation a few years ago and met Heywood who is on the same management roster as she is. He said that he really liked her music, so she invited him to play bass on the project.

“So that’s kind of how that came about! I sort of had him in mind before we even started recording. John was recording remotely from Philadelphia, so it was an interesting process.”

“I came kind of armed with some songs I had. I’d already been writing with a band in mind. It sort of kind of happened naturally across that period. But yeah, moving to Auckland was the real impetus for playing in a band, and you can hear that. There’s a sort of sense I think of being on the precipice of something new in the songs on ‘Your Favourite’, and also there’s like a brightness to them, a sort of chaos almost, that reflects the city environment!”

Bursting out of the starting gate the EP’s effusively poppy title track is just that, bright and chaotic with the excitement that comes with a new attraction, andnervously wanting to be that someone’s first choice. 

Released as a first single in early June, Suzy May dials up the indie rock angst quotient and comes with the ear worm chorus line, ‘oooh oohooh, oooh oohooh, I’m bored’.

The same vocal device also features in the chorus of Your Favourite and again in Don’t Get Weird. 

“Yeah, I guess it does crop up a bit!” she laughs when asked why so. “I don’t know. I guess it’s like it’s catchy. It’s fun. You know, it’s like you get to the chorus and you just want to sort of open it up, maybe. It wasn’t like ‘Okay, every song needs to to have this motif, but I think it’s kind of cool that it happens that way. It’s a recurring motif through the EP.”

It’s also in keeping with the onservation that across the EP Torrance builds a world of almost-connections.

“There’s certainly a sort of continuity in that motif. It sort of glues the songs together. I think as well, the songs do have a distinctiveness. They sort of stand alone, as well as fitting together really nicely – and I think that is because they were all written more or less around the same time, and with the same vision in mind. It’s a source of motivation knowing how you want your next project to sound.”

Third track, I’ve Got a Record, was the first song written for the EP and provides a bridge between Torrance’s previous work and this new era, starting in a softer emotional tone before leaning into the full band pop-rock of the other three other tracks.

“I do really love how that intros, if you like, the new sound or the band sound – and I wrote it while I was still in that mode, living in Thames. So I think it is a really sort of apt, symbol of transition maybe, and it does sound different from the others. I like kind of having it in the middle like that, I guess it’s also a bridge between the first half and the second half of the EP.

“The first half, you’re kind of dropped in withYour Favourite, which is just really, I think, exciting. There’s also sort of a cyclical feel to it –  maybe that kind of sense of chaos that I mentioned earlier. And then with Suzy May as well I think. And then you kind of get a little relief from that with I’ve Got a Record, which becomes sort of like a nice segue to the next part.”

Don’t Get Weird, provides the EP’s emotional climax, fast shifting dynamics and lyrical volatility providing a sense of motion. The four-song EP finishes unexpectedly soon. 

“I think I wrote that last song and it felt like that closed the project,” Torrance explains. “It felt finished. I like that it’s short and snappy. It is a real kind of just snapshot of a time in my life, I suppose.

“I think there’s a charm to ‘Your Favourite’, and that there is a real sense of motion – I think is a good way to describe it. You know, it’s always moving, and it’s exciting, and you’re kind of moving with it. There’s a sense of being maybe a little bit untethered, or I like to think of it as so. It’s sort of like all of these ideas manifest in that last song, yeah.”

In the year or so since recording ‘Your Favourite’ she’s worked with several iterations of a live band, which has settled happily as The Garden Party, another trio of herself with Ben Frisby on bass, and drummer Finn McNeill.

“I have a really great band. Finn is a jazz drummer, but he’s just very versatile and talented. We played our debut show at Going Global last year, and have been writing a lot as a trio since then. It’s just been a really fruitful creative period.”